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Really nice video. The manouvering is reaaaaaally tight. Especially the controll of altitude and speed, which is quite amazing.

Didn't have time to watch the entire things, but a couple of things in particular which I noticed:

At the one minute mark, the mossie is doing a reversal manouver and using afterburners to go up. Notice how it moves in a fixed trajectory and the scythe is able to keep track of it easily. This happens pretty much every time someone uses that manouver. Much the same can be seen in the dogfight at the twelve minute mark.

The changes between primary and rockets are really smooth. Notice at around 6:30 when the scythe engages a reaver, shoots one magazine of the hailstorm and then changes to rockets to finish the kill.

Yeah, that video was absolutely mental. Assumed he was using hover frame to get the stability to aim at individual infantry, but turns out he actually uses the dogfighting frame, using increased yaw speed to help track targets. Interesting.

Re: farming sundies rather than taking them out, I'm not so sure. It's fairly easy to heal a sunderer through rocket pod attacks from a single aircraft. He avoids engaging Liberators as well, presumably because it is fairly easy for them to soak up damage and escape a single ESF.

Well, inspired as I was by that video, I tried to emulate it yesterday on amerish, playing close ground support to alpha. It worked surprisingly well, although I'm nowhere near doing things with the same speed, reflexes and precision. Got a 9 kill streak with the turbo laser and a couple of kills with the pods before I flew into a cliff and perished. For this I had max dogfigthing airframe, autorepair 2 and flares 3.

Of course there wasn't that much resistance in the air yesterday or a really big fight on the ground in which case I would probably have abandoned the attempt.

Flying low did help quite a bit with lock ons, but I was also shot down with a dumbfire launcher at one point, so always stay on the move I say. The terrain on amerish is also very nice for this sort of flying, always a mountain/tree to hide behind.

Some good basic tips in those videos. They are a bit old though, so some info is not up to date.

By the way, are most people who upload dogfighting videos playing on American servers? Maybe it's just prejudice on my part, but from what I've seen in ESF videos from those servers the pilots are not as good as those we have on Miller. You see a lot of people flying in straight lines, fleeing in to enemy territory, and stuff like that. It'd be nice to see a dogfighting video from one of the top pilots on our server.

Some good basic tips in those videos. They are a bit old though, so some info is not up to date.

By the way, are most people who upload dogfighting videos playing on American servers? Maybe it's just prejudice on my part, but from what I've seen in ESF videos from those servers the pilots are not as good as those we have on Miller. You see a lot of people flying in straight lines, fleeing in to enemy territory, and stuff like that. It'd be nice to see a dogfighting video from one of the top pilots on our server.

[DWG]Davelantor used to upload a lot of videos, although he is not that active nowadays, IIRC. I think Swisz (again from DWG) has uploaded a few. MattiAce also occasionally flies his Reaver on Miller, although nowadays he prefers TR on Woodman and VS on Cobalt, if I'm not mistaken. Still, he is an amazing pilot and he flies in European servers.\

NoxSoux though flies on Connery, where VS are dominant, and he is part of what is arguably the best PS2 competitive outfit, FutureCrew.

After a short hiatus, it's time to start training with those shiny flying giraffes again. Next flying training will be held on monday 7/10 at 21:00 CEST. That means 20:00 brit time (and the rest of western Europe) and 22:00 for eastern Europe (or just UTC+2 for convience's sake).

We will be focusing on manouvering. More specifically, how to manouver when there are a lot of friendly air and how to avoid mid-air collisions. If enough people have the PTS launcher installed, we will be there. If not, we will be in VR.

Those who are interested have probably already seen this as it's from the miller reddit. Just a nice example of dogfighting on Miller from Fourthfactioneer. He starts off with a reaver but at about 4:30 he switches to a scythe.

So now that I've earned my silver (!) medals with PPA and lolpods I thought I'd share some of the incredible wisdom that has helped me reach these incredible heights. Today's lesson will focus on the area with which I have most extensive experience: dieing.

TrooperWally's guide to what kills Scythes

Lock ons - once it's locked on you're going to need a mix of luck and skill to break the lock. Each regular lock on takes about 45% of a Scythe's health and a bad landing can take 10%. So when you see the lock on warning GET OUT OF THERE!Enemy ESFs - many of the enemy pilots are skilled and winning a dog fight is hard, particularly if you don't start it. Avoid areas of high enemy air concentrations.Friendly ESFs - they crash into you (or you into them). Avoid areas of high friendly air concentrations.MBTs - Those big guns are cruel, one hit and you're dead. Don't hover near MBTs and don't fly towards them from the front. Only shoot them when they are weakened somehow (low BR driver, already damaged) or when you can ecape easily (e.g. by hiding behind terrain).Terrain - really good for hiding behind but quite deadly. Find out where it is and don't go there. Unfortunately flying under rock arches, bridges and trees is about the best way to lose lock ons and pursuing ESFs. Much pratice required.Dumbfire rockets - nature's way of telling you you were too greedy with the spawn camp is a one hit kill dumb fire.Landing - landing painlessly is quite hard. You need a flat place and low speed. The good news is that even when burning the flames don't damage very quickly. What they do is cause the pilot to panic and slam into the ground thus taking a little bit of damage which triggers the explosion of 'game over'.Flipping - Vanu's finest minds still can't explain why a scythe spontaneously flips shortly after landing in apparanent violation of the second law of thermodynamics and the conservation of momentum. TR sabotage is suspected.

So my learning to fly project continues and I'm pleased to report my first dogfight 'victory'. If we're being generous, we'll call it a pyrrhic victory. If not, we'll call it a farce. I was dogfighting a mossie 1v1. We were both low on health but he crashed into the ground whilst I retained sufficient spatial awareness to remain flying. Unfortunately I then bonked the ground slightly too hard on landing and exploded. So neither of us came out of it well but the dogfight itself ended when my enemy died. Hence, I win.

Anyway, story time over.

Can anyone help me learn to dogfight better? I'm now reasonable at the A2G stuff but get taken apart whenever a decent enemy pilot shows up. Would anyone else fancy a night of running the air squad? I'm more than happy to do my stint at the repair zone gunning a skyguard or repairing our returning heroes though would also like a bit of time in the air, ideally hunting enemy ESFs as a pack.

One thing that's always we always could do would be to swap scythes, maybe equip fire suppression first, and go dogfight against each other near our warp gate.
AFAIK you won't get weapon-locked if you shoot your own scythe, so this can be as long as we want.
And yeah, I am most assuredly up for flying.

If we have a dedicated group interested in dogfighting, we can always use the PTS as well. It's kind of sketchy (or at least was) when it comes to flying, but it should be good enough for training basic stuff.

If we have a dedicated group interested in dogfighting, we can always use the PTS as well. It's kind of sketchy (or at least was) when it comes to flying, but it should be good enough for training basic stuff.

Haven't they changed the FOV for vehicles on the PTS? Might make it an odd transition back to the regular server